The Awful Possibilities

by Christian TeBordo

  The little girl doesn’t see them, doesn’t mean to see them, or just doesn’t care. She’s got other things on her mind. Something to do with the traffic. Standing before her in the middle of the intersection, strings slack, the man still thinks she thinks she’s directing traffic.

  She blows her whistle. She flaps her arms. Traffic continues flowing smoothly, though now that he’s in the middle of the street, the man can see that the cars that make up the traffic are slowing as they approach the intersection, the drivers trying to avoid hitting the little girl, and now the man, or to see what they can see.

  “Directing traffic?” the man says.

  The girl points a finger at him. She blows her whistle at him. She keeps on directing traffic, or whatever it is she’s doing, with the arm that isn’t pointing its finger.

  “What?” he says.

  The little girl opens her mouth. For a moment, the whistle sticks to her upper lip. Then it falls downward and dangles from the string around her neck. The girl takes a step forward and her finger pokes the man in the chest.

  “You’re in my way,” she says.

  “I’m in your way,” he says.

  He wants to get out of her way, to turn around, get out of the middle of the street, go back to whatever he was going about, but something—let’s say the strings—won’t let him.

  “Directing traffic,” he says.

  She drops her finger-pointing arm to its side. She stops flapping the other arm, and lets it fall to the other side. There is no noticeable change in the flow of traffic. Still the same slowing at the intersection for the same reasons.

  “I’m hitching a ride,” she says.

  The man would really like to leave.

  “That’s not how you hitch a ride,” he says. “You hitch a ride like this.”

  The man stretches out an arm, stretches out the thumb at the end of it, but he’s standing in the middle of an intersection, and even if a driver were inclined to pick up a hitchhiker while driving smoothly if slowly through, the driver wouldn’t know which direction the man hoped to go, and probably wouldn’t take the trouble to find out.

  Who knows what their inclinations are. No one is taking the trouble to find out.

  “That’s not how I hitch a ride,” says the little girl. “I hitch a ride like this.”

  She puts the whistle back into her mouth, blows it at him, and begins to flap her arms like a marionette.

  “Good luck,” says the man.

  But he doesn’t turn to leave.

  The girl speaks around her whistle: “You got a car?” she says.

  “What’s your name?” she says.

  He tells himself not to tell her. He tells her his name.

  They’re in his car now, but they aren’t going anywhere. He hasn’t even put the keys in the ignition.

  “Buckle your seatbelt,” he says.

  The seatbelt barely fits around her backpack. Her backpack is on her lap. It covers her entire lap from the top of her thighs to the tip of her knees, with maybe a little overhang depending on whether she’s slouching or sitting up straight. He hadn’t noticed how large it was when they were standing in the middle of the street, because when they were standing in the middle of the street, she’d been facing him the whole time. He hears the seatbelt click and starts the car.

  “Where are we going?” he says.

  “The cemetery,” she says. “A funeral.”

  “You mean a burial?” he says. “They usually have the funeral at church.”

  He puts the car in gear and pulls out into the busy intersection where traffic is still flowing smoothly despite the little girl’s absence.

  “Or a funeral home,” he says.

  He doesn’t know why, but he turns left at the intersection, heading for a particular cemetery even though the little girl hasn’t told him which particular cemetery the funeral, the burial, is being held at.

  “Not Will,” she says.

  “Who’s Will?” he says.

  “Will’s having a funeral at the cemetery,” says the little girl.

  He assumes Will is a friend. Her use of his first name—he assumes Will is a first name, assumes Will is a he—leads him to assume that Will is a friend, rather than a relative, a teacher, a neighbor, and he is overcome with feeling for the girl. Something pulls a tear from one of his eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” he says.

  The little girl looks at him as though she doesn’t understand why he should be sorry and says: “Yeah you are.”

  Now the tears flow freely from both of his eyes. No one has to pry them out. He’s incapacitated by his own weeping. The car swerves right and harder left while the man tries to steer through the blur of his tears.

  The little girl yells at him: “You trying to kill us?” and the man stutters “No,” through sobs and around hiccups. Finally he manages to pull over to the shoulder, slam on the brakes, and cut the engine.

  “Put it in park,” the girl says.

  He puts it in park just as the car is beginning to roll backward down the mild incline. The little girl opens the front pocket of her backpack and rummages through it.

  “I might have to find someone else to hitch a ride with,” she says.

  “N-no,” he stutters, still sobbing.

  “Then clean yourself up,” she says, pulling a wad of napkins from the pocket.

  The man accepts the napkins and wipes the tears from his cheeks and eyes. He blows his nose as the sobbing slows then stops altogether. His breath comes shaky and shallow, and he feels weaker than he usually does.

  He blows his nose again, throws the soggy napkins into the back seat, and inhales deeply until he’s sitting upright with his chest puffed out. He exhales, inhales again, and forgets to exhale. He sniffs, deeply, as though something stinks.

  “Something stinks,” he says.

  “Yeah, you,” says the girl.

  The man sniffs the air again. Again, sniffing in directions, his head rolling as though he’s having a fit.

  “No,” he says. “Something stinks.”

  “Something stinks,” the girls says in her most mocking voice.

  She rolls her head, sniffing and sniffing around the car like a cartoon. The man stops sniffing and watches her. He’d like to smack her upside the head, but he doesn’t, he can’t. The little girl, seeing she’s made her point, stops rolling her head, rolls her eyes, and smacks him upside the head.

  “Drive,” she says.

  But he doesn’t drive yet. His eyes have landed on her backpack, at its open front pocket. He sniffs again, but doesn’t move any closer to her, to it.

  “What’s in the bag?” he says.

  Suddenly she doesn’t seem so defiant. She doesn’t have an answer. She reaches quickly but awkwardly for the zipper, and it gets caught halfway. She tugs and it doesn’t budge. She tugs again but nothing. She’s tugging and tugging her way to a tantrum.

  The man reaches over calmly and peels her fingers from the bag. He pulls the zipper back an inch or so in the direction of open, and closes it smoothly.

  The little girl flashes him a look—something like a pout, but with an I-could-have-done-it-myself anger, or maybe frustration, behind it. He’s seen that look before, but he can’t quite remember where. It doesn’t make him want to cry, though. He can’t remember what it makes him want to do.

  “Can we go?” she says.

  “Is that it?” he says.

  They’re at the cemetery now. The strings have pointed his finger toward something just beyond the windshield—a party of mourners standing around a casket, mourning, while a priest stands at the head of the casket, chanting or incanting.

  The little girl doesn’t say anything. She hasn’t said anything since asking if they could go, but she unbuckles the seatbelt, hefts the bag, and opens the door. The man cuts the engine.

  “So this is it,” he says, and the little girl slams her door on his affirmation.

  None of the mourners seems to register their
approach. No, oh little so-and-so made it to her friend Will’s funeral, or who the hell is that man with little so-and-so, or who the hell is that little so-and-so. They’re a staid group of mourners, not a moist eye in the bunch.

  The man would prefer some tears, a sound or two beside the priestly drone, so he provides it himself. The tears flow again, freely from his eyes, incapacitating him with weeping. The girl punches him to stop, tells him to pull himself together, but he can’t hear her through the sobs and hiccups.

  The girl takes off her backpack, rummages through the front pocket, and pulls out another wad of napkins. She shoves them into his hands, and his sobs die down. He begins to clean himself up.

  As his eyes clear, he looks around to see if his outburst has startled anyone, or sparked any other outbursts or potential outbursts, but the mourners still look like they’re lost in themselves. The priest says his ashes to ashes and the mourners file away by ones and twos.

  “I feel better,” says the man. “Don’t you feel better?”

  He brings the soggy wad of napkins to his nose and sniffs inconspicuously while he awaits an answer.

  “I thought they put the coffin in the ground and throw dirt and flowers on it,” says the little girl.

  She looks up at him. He yanks the napkins from his nostrils and shoves them behind his back as though the napkins were what he meant to hide.

  “Yes,” he says, looking around for some physical manifestation of what he’s affirming.

  His eyes land on the casket suspended above its final resting place and covered in flowers, alone, as the last of the mourners straggle from the grave site, get into their cars, and drive away.

  His fingers fiddle with the napkins behind his back. He doesn’t want to look at the little girl, but he does. Her physique manifests confusion over the contradiction between his confirmation and the facts before their eyes.

  “I mean no,” says the man. “Only in the movies.”

  “What about the guns?” she says.

  This time he has no idea what she’s talking about.

  “Movies,” he says.

  “Will’s funeral’s gonna have guns,” she says.

  “It’s over,” he says. “There were no guns.”

  “I’m talking about Will’s funeral,” says the little girl.

  “You’re sure that wasn’t it?” he says.

  They’re walking now, through the cemetery, ever further from the site of what he’d thought—because the little girl had done nothing to deny it—was Will’s grave, and far from the sight of it.

  “It wasn’t it,” she says.

  “Because I don’t see any others,” he says.

  The girl ignores him and keeps walking up the gentle slope. He follows, pulled along by something like a string. The cemetery is larger than he would have guessed driving past it, they’ve been walking longer than he would have guessed they’d be able to walk without ever retracing their steps and moving in circles, and the sun has just dropped behind the gentle slope a few gentle slopes over, leaving them to hike by dusk-light.

  “It’s getting dark,” he says.

  “Don’t you ever shut up?” says the girl.

  He shuts up. He concentrates on staying that way, but they’ve been walking for a long time and the less he talks, the more he tries to concentrate on not talking, the more he concentrates on how tired he is, and hungry, the more tired and hungry he becomes. It’s like there’s another string pulling him in the opposite direction, creating a near equilibrium.

  The distance between them isn’t so big—a pace or two—but when he falls back another pace or two, the girl, who hasn’t looked back in a while, looks back. Another pace or two and the man stops, too exhausted to go on without a break. He bends over with his hands to his knees, stares at the grass around his feet and pants a little. The little girl stops with her back to him.

  “What?” she says.

  “I need a second,” he says.

  She slips out of her backpack and pulls it around to the front of her, easing it down to the ground. She bends over, unzips the backpack, and rummages through it.

  “Hungry?” she says.

  She pulls out an open, half-full package of orange peanut butter crackers, and holds them over her shoulder. The man hears the wrapper crackle, looks up from the ground, and sees it glinting in the half-light. He walks toward her, around her, taking the package from her upstretched hand as he goes. The man stops in front of the little girl and withdraws a cracker from the wrapper.

  He shoves the cracker whole in his mouth and hands the package back to her. She accepts, withdraws and nibbles away while putting the package back into her bag and trying to close the zipper one-handed.

  It gets caught halfway. She tugs and it doesn’t budge. Again, but nothing. The man reaches over calmly and pulls the zipper back an inch or so in the direction of open, then closes it smoothly.

  “Ready?” he says.

  The girl tries to lift the bag, but its bottom doesn’t leave the ground. It’s gotten about ten pounds heavier in the course of their break. Not the bag itself but the bag in relation to the girl, its liftability.

  “Let me give you a hand,” says the man.

  He reaches for the bag, lifts it by a single strap, and slings it over a shoulder.

  The girl screams: “No.”

  She pounces. She grabs the bottom of the bag with both hands tightly. She lifts her legs from the ground, allows the bag to lift her in hopes that it will fall with her too. The man spins left, trying to see what’s happening behind him, but the girl’s ungrounded legs fly out behind her and she remains behind him, though the location of behind him changes from one moment to the next.

  Faster now, until her body is perpendicular to yours and her grip starts to slip from the bottom of the bag, until her screams of no and stop and give it back blend into something a little less intelligible and a little more primitive, until her body flies away in the direction of centrifugal force and, of course, gravity, and she hits the ground dizzy and whimpering and empty-handed, but otherwise unharmed.

  He stops facing her. He bends over and vomits at the ground between his feet, splattering his sneakers and smearing his face with what little there was in his stomach. The little girl sits up with her head between her hands and her elbows on her knees like she might do the same herself, but she suddenly stands, walks around behind him, unzips the front pocket of her backpack, and rummages through it.

  She pulls out another wad of napkins and hands it to him over his shoulder. He takes them, splitting the wad in rough halves, using the one to wipe his shoes, the other his face. He stops mid-wipe, and looks over his shoulder at the little girl.

  “What the fuck is that smell?” he says.

  She gives him the look again, but he still can’t remember what it makes him want to do. She reaches down and zips the front pocket of her backpack without any struggle.

  “Can I have my bag back now?” she says.

  “I see something,” he says as they crest another gentle slope.

  It’s been a long time since he’s seen anything but dark shapes, the dark shape of the little girl in front of him, the bag like a huge, head-hiding hunch on her back. It’s moonless night now. They’ve been relying on their feet and the feel of the ground.

  “It’s a light,” he says.

  A fire of some sort, radiating pale-orange a few feet every way but down. A scraping sound comes from the same direction as the fire, slow and faint. They move toward it and the light grows more bright, the scraping louder but just as slow.

  The light resolves itself into an old camping lantern. The lantern rests on the ground in front of a large pile of dirt, a pile of dirt that grows imperceptibly larger as more dirt flies out of a hole in the ground—a hole that they still can’t see—in counterpoint to the scrapes.

  The little girl runs on ahead. The man tries to run, but lags.

  “We’re here,” yells the girl, dime-stopping with swingin
g arms at the lip of a hole the man can see now, though he’s still a few yards back.

  The little girl steadies herself, squats, lets the backpack slip from her shoulders to the earth behind her, and disappears into the hole—legs, torso, head and hands. It gives the man the scare he needs to lunge the last few feet.

  Looking down into what he can see now is a grave-in-progress, he finds the little girl, arms thrown about the neck of a short, sinewy man of indeterminate age, dirty from digging in his work-wear, face shadowed by the dark of the pit and the stuffed-down brim of a baseball hat, a spade resting against his thigh. They look the portrait of a father and daughter, the portrait of a sinister father and daughter.

  “That’s him,” says the little girl to the gravedigger.

  “Who,” the man says.

  “You,” says the gravedigger, lifting the girl by the waist back to the edge of the hole, and seating her there with her legs dangling over the side.

  The gravedigger then puts his own hands on the edge and lifts and pulls and kicks his way up, with grunts and strains and popping veins. He manages to get a leg, crooked at the knee, onto flat ground, and crawls his awkward way out.

  “I don’t know which is harder,” he says, wiping sweat mingled with dirt to mud from his face with the back of a forearm, “getting in or getting out.”

  The man stares at him as though he doesn’t know to chuckle because he doesn’t.

  “Depends who you are,” says the girl with a giggle.

  “Depends who you are,” the gravedigger laughs.

  Something forces a forced chuckle from the man—there’s no string that can force a chuckle—then forces a joke as well:

  “What man dost thou dig it for?” he says.

  The gravedigger rolls his head as though he’s rolling his brim-hidden eyes as though he’s heard it a thousand times. He digs in his pockets, pulls out a match, and strikes it against his dirt-crusted shirt. It flares, releasing a sulfurous smell and illuminating everything but his face. He pulls a cigarette from behind his ear and lights it with the match.